MANILA, 15 April 2004 — Some 16,900 Filipinos have voted so far in the first two days of the overseas absentee voting all over the world, the Overseas Absentee Voting (OAV) Secretariat said yesterday.
Of the early voters, the most senior was 98-year-old Toribia E. Lopez, who voted in Agana, Guam, and the youngest was 18-year old Christopher Van Opstal, who voted in Sydney, the secretariat said.
Both Lopez and Opstal were among the first to vote when the one-month voting period of land-based overseas Filipinos opened on April 11.
Foreign Affairs Secretary Delia Albert earlier said the start of absentee voting’s implementation was marked by much enthusiasm among members of the community such that some voting centers were forced to open earlier than planned to accommodate waiting voters. She said there was also a strong sense of civic duty.
“I am particularly touched by the active participation of the members of our Filipino communities overseas in helping to ensure the smooth and orderly holding of these elections,” Albert said in a press statement of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).
She said the number represents a good start. “It is just the first day of voting and I anticipate this number to rise significantly over the next four weeks,” she said.
Particularly inspiring, she said, was that senior citizens and the youth were among the first to cast their ballots.
First in line to vote was Bernadette Estuita, a registered nurse working in a retirement home in New Zealand.
“When our Embassy in Wellington (New Zealand) opened its doors at 9 a.m., at the head of the line was Miss Estuita,” Foreign Affairs Secretary Delia Albert said in a press statement. She added that John Paolo Borja, a business administration student at the Victoria University of Wellington, was the second voter.
Earlier on March 12, Capt. Brigido L. Sevilla became the first OFW to cast his vote as an absentee voter. He cast his ballot at the Philippine Embassy in Bandar Seri Begawan in Brunei. Captain Sevilla hails from San Juan, Batangas, and has been plying the international sea lanes for the past 20 years.
The voting period for all land-based overseas Filipinos will be one month, which began March 11, while that for sea-based Filipinos will last two months.
Albert commended the 2,205 election officers deputized by the Commission on Election (Comelec) from the ranks of foreign service corps, members of attached agencies of the government, as well as members of the Filipino communities overseas for their volunteerist spirit.
Comelec Commissioner Florentino Tuason, who is in charge of the absentee voting, said the poll body was sending two supervisory teams to Saudi Arabia in anticipation of the influx of voters this weekend.
Tuason explained that the teams would be sent as a contingency since so far they had not encountered any problems that could not be solved.
Among these, he said, was the inadvertent exclusion of some overseas Filipinos from the Certified List of Overseas Absentee Voters (CLOAV).
